Thursday, September 03, 2009

iPhone 3G Network Slow?



Has your iPhone 3G been going slower and slower? Mine has. Now this from Adrian Kingsley-Hughes at ZDnet - iPhone users strangling the AT&T network.

What is dawning on AT&T is that the iPhone changes the way people use phones.
"Up until the iPhone, smartphones were cellphones with a browser clumsily attached. The iPhone is basically a pipe to the internet with a phone attached."
This is exactly what I experienced when I wrote "Goodbye Laptop - Hello iPhone"

It is precisely whythe 9 million iPhone users are using more of the network than AT&T's 20 million other cell phone users.

Hopefully AT&T can continue to build out the plumping or Apple can sign another provider that can keep up.

Tuesday, September 01, 2009

Can Social Media Sell Wine?

Steve Heimhoff asks the question "Has social media ever sold anything, besides itself?" It's a great question and has prompted a good discussion on his blog.

There is a lot of evidence that making social media a strategic part of a winery's overall marketing mix makes good business sense. I've been working to create a concrete ROI for social media's use in wineries and in my research thus far I've have found a lot of evidence that a dollar spent on social media can be much more effective than a dollar spent on traditional media.

According to Nielson online we trust the recommendations of friends (90%) and online reviews (70%) a lot more than traditional media (62% and lower). A good wine review from a friend is going to influence me more than a good review by a known wine critic. Forrester's recent Social Technology report found that the prime wine buying demographic of 35+ year olds grew their online participation by 60% last year prompting them to conclude:
"... marketers can now safely create social media marketing for people ages 35 and older."
In a recent survey by Viralvines.com on Twitter use in wineries, in answer to the question "How has your presence on Twitter helped your business? 96.4% responded that "It has helped us engage more with our customers"

Furthermore the conversation about a winery's brand is happening even if a winery chooses to ignore it and that carries a real risk of negative effects. According to Nielsen BuzzMetrics 25% of search results for the worlds largest brands are links to user generated content. This extends to niche brands as well and a bad review without the appropriate response can have long lasting effects.